@chucktodd: The voting machine
conspiracies belong in same category as the Trump birther
garbage.22 Oct 12

Todd was
responding, no doubt, to the many folks who have been
justifiably concerned of late, since it was discovered that
a bunch of Bain Capital investors, led by Mitt Romney's son
Tagg, via a company called H.I.G. Capital (believed to stand
for Hart Intercivic Group) took over control of Hart Intercivic,
the nation's third largest voting machine company, in
2011.

The Austin-based Hart company, according to VerifiedVoting.org's
database, supplies electronic voting machines and paper
ballot tabulators that will be used to tally votes in the
Presidential Election this year in all or parts of
California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky,
Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and
Washington.

I offered my
point of view about those concerns earlier this month,
explaining that it was not just the private ownership of
Hart's machines by Romney backers which voters should be
concerned about, but the private ownership of the similar
systems in all fifty states that will once again be
used to tabulate the results of this year's Presidential
Election with little --- and very often zero --- possibility
of oversight by the public or even by election
officials.

Todd does an extraordinary disservice to the
electorate with Tweets like the one above, and I'd be happy
to come on his daily MSNBC show any time to explain why, as
I have told him via Twitter in response to the above.

As
Todd has not responded in kind, and to expand upon my
response to Todd there, I'd like to ask him these few
respectful questions...

• Was it 'conspiracy garbage' when
eight (8) top election officials --- including the County
Clerk, a Circuit Court Judge and the School Superintendent
--- in Clay County, KY were sentenced last year to 156 years in federal
prison for gaming elections, including changing the
votes of voters on ES&S electronic touch-screen voting
machines?

• Was it 'conspiracy garbage' when the
President of Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (by then renamed
Premier Election Systems, which is now owned by the Canadian
firm Dominion Voting) admitted in 2008 that the company's
GEMS central tabulation software, used in some 34 states, does
not tabulate votes correctly and routinely drops
thousands of them when they are uploaded to the central
server?

• Was it 'conspiracy garbage'
when the 2007 landmark study commissioned by OH's then
Democratic Sec. of State, found "Ohio's electronic voting systems
have 'critical security failures' which could impact the
integrity of elections in the Buckeye State" and when she
(unsuccessfully) recommended, along with the then Republican
Speaker of the Senate, who is now the state's Republican
Sec. of State, that all touch-screen systems in the state be
decertified due to concerns of, as she
told The BRAD BLOG, "viruses that can be inserted into
[Ohio's e-voting and tabulation] system through something as
simple as a PDA [Personal Digital Assistant] and a magnet
and then the cards are passed from machine to machine almost
like Typhoid Mary" so that "If there is malicious software,
like a virus put into the system, it can not only affect the
machines at the polling places, it can affect the tabulation
that occurs at the server and it can also affect future
elections if it's not detected"?

• Was it 'conspiracy
garbage' when the New York Daily News discovered in
2012 that hundreds of paper ballots at just one
precinct in the Bronx went uncounted in 2010 during the
September primary (failure rate of 70%) and the November
general election (failure rate of 54%) on their brand new
ES&S DS200 paper ballot optical-scanners, which are also
used in OH, AZ, MI and elsewhere?

• Was it 'conspiracy garbage' when a
computer security expert hacked a memory card on a Diebold
paper ballot optical-scan system and flipped the results of
a mock election (see the hack and its results as captured in HBO's Emmy-nominated 2006
documentary Hacking Democracy here) in such a way that
only a hand-count of the paper ballots in the election could
reveal the true results?

• Was it
'conspiracy garbage' that the Vulnerability Assessment Team
(which also monitors nuclear facilities) at Argonne National
Laboratory (the non-profit research lab operated by the
University of Chicago for the Dept. of Energy) released a
report earlier this year finding that Diebold's touch-screen
systems and, according to the team's lead scientist, "pretty
much every electronic voting machine", can be hacked with just $10.50 in parts and
an 8th grade science education, or just $26 if you want
to do it remotely?

• Was it 'conspiracy garbage' when,
in Volusia County, FL's 2000 Presidential Election a
paper-based optical-scan tabulator made by Global Elections
Management Systems (GEMS, thereafter purchased by Diebold to
become Diebold Election Systems, Inc.) tallied negative 16,022 votes for Al
Gore thanks to a supposed "software flaw" which has
never been explained by anyone, and which Leon County
(Tallahassee), FL's Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho ---
the man, so well respected by both major parties, that he
was placed in charge of the aborted 2000 Presidential
Election recount in Florida --- believes was a purposeful
hack of the electronic tabulation system which is now used
in hundreds of counties in dozens of states?

I could go on
and on, obviously, but I won't. You're welcome. There are
some 10 years worth of articles at The BRAD
BLOG that folks can peruse to determine the facts
underscoring my concerns and those of the others who have
legitimately expressed them to you, Chuck Todd, about
private, unaccountable corporations --- owned by associates
of Mitt Romney or by anybody else --- having so much
unoverseeable control of our once-public electoral
system.

But, to misinform your 272,035 Twitter followers,
not to mention your millions of viewers on television, that
concerns about oft-failed, easily-manipulated electronic
voting and tabulation systems are little more than
"conspiracies" which "belong in the same category as the
Trump birther garbage" is an extraordinary disservice to
your readers, your viewers and the U.S. electorate as a
whole.

They deserve a much better understanding of
our electoral system from someone such as yourself, who is
relied upon by so many as an expert in these
matters.

Again, I would welcome the opportunity to discuss
these concerns with you on your Daily Rundown show on
MSNBC any time.

If, in fact, you are correct, that these
concerns are little more than 'conspiracy garbage', you will
do the electorate a great service by having me on, and
putting me in my place once and for all by explaining
why.

If these concerns are not 'conspiracy garbage', as I
would argue, you would be performing a great service to the
electorate by helping the electorate understand why they are
not, and what voters may be able to do at this point to help
minimize the possibilities of their votes not being counted
accurately or transparently, or even at all, this November
6th.

Either way, the electorate will end up being much
better informed before this year's Presidential Election,
which is, after all, as I'm sure we can both agree, the most
important core function of your job --- and mine --- as
journalists.

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